


The Chosen Boys

by cammmie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ilvermorny, Dream Smp, Gen, Ilvermorny, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29224554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cammmie/pseuds/cammmie
Summary: A prophecy is delivered, announcing imminent doom to the wizarding world unless a group of seven young wizards can learn to band together and overcome their mutual differences.Clay is a kid living in a group home with his little sister Amy. Before his eleventh birthday, he accidentally triggers his magic and earns his spot in Ilvermorny.Dream SMP Ilvermorny (American Hogwarts) AU. Tags to be updated with each chapter.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 37





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Next year, at Ilvermorny  
> A weak boy of power shall arise,  
> Through his failures, he will become wise.  
> New and mature, humble, and great.  
> Untested and tough, home short estate.  
> The brawn with no muscle and the face with no face,  
> Will find one another in a strange place.  
> With the most damaged soul his fiercest protector,  
> The boy out of time shall endure beyond measure.  
> The grim with a halo and the blind boy that reads,  
> Will all unite and together succeed.  
> The seventh a foil to a discordant song,  
> The disrupter unifies what meant to be all along.  
> Alone, a failure, but together a strength.  
> Community found with bonds at arm's length.  
> Without their enemies, they will meet their end,  
> Defeating the evil the world thinks their friend.

_Next year, at Ilvermorny_

_A weak boy of power shall arise,_

_Through his failures, he will become wise._

_New and mature, humble, and great._

_Untested and tough, home short estate._

_The brawn with no muscle and the face with no face,_

_Will find one another in a strange place._

_With the most damaged soul his fiercest protector,_

_The boy out of time shall endure beyond measure._

_The grim with a halo and the blind boy that reads,_

_Will all unite and together succeed._

_The seventh a foil to a discordant song,_

_The disrupter unifies what meant to be all along._

_Alone, a failure, but together a strength._

_Community found with bonds at arm's length._

_Without their enemies, they will meet their end,_

_Defeating the evil the world thinks their friend._

“Are you sure?”

“Sure as fate.”

The head in the fire levelled a look at the man standing before him, thoroughly unconvinced.

“Describe to me how it happened again. I want to write it down this time. I’ll have the experts look over your testimony in the morning.”

The man standing in front of the fireplace sighed, looking over his desk to check on the trembling woman murmuring to herself on his floor. She was still frantically going over the twigs, tea leaves, tarot cards, crystal balls, books, mirrors, and star charts that had all but taken over the floor of his office. One hand traced the angles between constellations in a chart while another held up a sixth cup of tea she was forcing herself to drink. Her foot propped up a mirror reflecting an image that was not of this room.

“Need I remind you,” said the man, grimly, looking back to the fire, “that I taught the experts.” The head scoffed.

“You are not the prodigy you once were, Headmaster,” it said. “Accio Quill.” Looking up at him with as much petulance as possible, it sniffed, “I’m waiting.”

The man, undeterred, patiently began recounting the events of the night again. He would normally not bother with such rudeness, but he had to pick his battles now. Tonight was bigger than him and his ego.

He narrated how the seer beside him now had come to his office in a trace-like state, pale and unseeing. How she had begun speaking in a voice that wasn’t her own the moment he had opened his door to her. He repeated the prophecy that had come from her mouth, ominous and nonsensical. He spoke of how when she finished, she didn’t know where she was or what she had said, and how she was even now still using every form of divination at her disposal to check and confirm the prophecy she had administered.

“The last time there was a prophecy—”

“Of course. However, this isn’t like last time. Circumstances are different.”

“I should expect so, thanks to the efforts of MACUSA, to be sure,” said the head self-importantly. “Expect an official follow-through from the Confederation within the next day. I hope you trust your source. False prophecies are a crime.”

“I do,” the man said, watching the woman bemusedly again.

The head disappeared, leaving the fire to return to its merry flickering.

The seer woman looked up now from where she was kneeling on the floor. Her eyes were bright and wide.

“Sir, what if I’m wrong?” Her bottom lip was quivering.

“You’re not wrong. Don’t worry.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “Headmaster—”

“Just Phil is fine.”

“Headmaster Minecraft,” she said firmly, “I’m worried what will happen when it gets out.”

“I expect that next year’s class of children will learn the feeling the eyes of the world on their backs before even learning of their places in this world at all. I also don’t see any future where it doesn’t get out. Perhaps news of the prophecy will be exchanged in idle gossip in the long quiet hallways of MACUSA. Perhaps a Department of Secrets employee in the Ministry will bring their child here for schooling next year to have a chance at being the next chosen one, and that child will let slip to his peers why he can’t join them for their first year of Hogwarts together. Perhaps it is already spreading now.”

“Are you not worried?”

“Worry brings stress, but to not be worried and prepare inadequately will inevitably serve only to bring more worry in the future.”

“Ah,” she frowned, picking up another set of tarot cards and beginning to shuffle them again. Her hands were shaky, and she dropped cards often. When she was left with only one card, she turned it over and wailed in frustration. “Again?” She cried, throwing the card aside. It landed on the floor by Phil’s feet, face up.

“The tower,” he read out matter-of-factly.

“Sir,” she said, suddenly stricken, “Voldemort isn’t coming back, is he?”

**********

Clay was skilled at evasion, and as he sprinted down the dark hallway between stores in his Floridian mall, he knew where to run. His backpack hung low, heavy on his shoulders and clanking with his long strides, full of “borrowed” things.

“Stop, boy!”

“Go away!” Clay yelled over his shoulder. “I think I saw someone sneak an outside candy bar into the movie theatre earlier! You should deal with them!”

“Bastard!” the mall cop shouted. He was gaining on Clay, the boy noted with alarm. His footsteps were getting closer and closer as they hurled themselves through the maze of twisting corridors in what felt like a never-ending chase. Clay grabbed a corner and swung himself to the right where two paths met, changing directions in an instant. He tried to step quieter to hide his route, but it was no use. The squeal of regulation runners sounded at Clay’s back as the huge mass of the cop fought and won against his own momentum to turn and follow him.

“Shit,” he hissed. Without thinking, he made another turn, focusing only on his pursuant behind him. He looked back and saw that the cop was only trailing a few feet away now. “Hey, man!” he said, nervously watching him encroach despite his best efforts, “I’m only eleven! My legs are shorter! Doesn’t that mean you should give me a head start?”

“Thieves don’t get head starts,” the heavy man wheezed. Clay barked a laugh at him, turning back to watch where he was going. When saw what was in front of him, a painful realization dawned immediately. He had made a terrible mistake. The hall he had just turned down was a dead end. His face fell.

“You’re stuck now, boy,” the cop said, coming to an exhausted stop. Clay was trapped. The heavy man put his hands on his knees, gasping for air. His red face sported a triumphant grin. Clay looked around for anything to help him, but there was only a padlocked defunct emergency exit decorating the back wall at the very end of the unlit hallway. He looked at his captor with fearful eyes, pleading in his mind for help from anyone, anything.

Clay backed up. If he couldn’t go forward, giving himself as much space as possible was his only option. The man cast an ominous shadow over him as he straightened up and blocked out the light from the main corridor, and Clay became suddenly aware of how small he was compared to the hulking figure of the cop.

“Please,” he whimpered. He walked backwards until his backpack pressed up against the far wall. “I have a little sister,” he said. Clay thought of how scared she would be if he never came back to get her from her hiding spot. She wouldn’t survive without him. He had to provide for her. His small hands scrabbled at the cheaply painted cinderblocks, wishing only for some way to get to her and make sure she was safe.

The mall cop grinned cruelly at the fear on Clay’s face. “Not often I get to actually bring in twerps like you. Won’t be able to deny the evidence when I pull up security footage neither.”

Clay turned his back on the man, grabbing at the padlock desperately. He yanked hard, but it was no use. It wasn’t one of the frail locks he could smash with a rock when he found them keeping bikes safe on the side of the road. It was sturdy and damning.

“Please!” he said again. He closed his eyes. If he imagined the door wasn’t there, and the doorway was open, and to only open to him, he could almost feel a small heat dancing at his fingertips. It was like the warmth of the small flashlight he used in emergencies and when his little sister had nightmares. “Please,” he whispered. “For my sister.”

The guard behind him was rambling on, talking about profit losses and gross earnings, things Clay knew nothing and cared nothing about. Clay peeled a single eye open and looked at the lock. His mouth dropped open. A faint blue light was spreading from the padlock he held to the door, highlighting strange, dancing patterns on its metal surface.

“Wha—” He gasped. The patterns were bizarre, and nothing he had seen before, but they were somehow, impossibly, undeniably familiar. He cocked his head, trying to analyze what he saw. They melted his mind. They made no sense to the part of his brain that demanded logic. When he looked at the symbols with his eyes, he could see them easily enough, but when he really thought about them, they slipped from his brain like water. They were there in every way that wasn’t real.

He steeled himself, thinking again of how long he had already been from his sister, and how dangerous it was for her to be without him. His heart was pounding, shot through with enough adrenaline to fix a dead man’s heart. He had to figure out what this meant if gave him even the slimmest chance to find a way out to her. Just when Clay was about to abandon all hope and just walk into the guard’s capture, right at the last moment before he stepped away and accepted defeat, something clicked in his head.

He got it now. The light was giving instructions.

Excitedly, he started tapping on the door in the places it dictated, not letting himself think about it.

“What are you doing, boy? It’s not a phone! You can’t call your mommy from here!” The man guffawed at his own joke. “Ha!”

Clay didn’t notice. With one final push with both palms on the solid metal door, it disappeared, fading into nothing in the blink of an eye. He could see everything outside, and it shed enough light to illuminate the whole hall. Swearing in shock, Clay stepped back before quickly jumping through the doorway, twisting around when he got to the other side and looking to see the guard’s reaction. But there was nothing to see. There was nothing behind him but the other side of the door.

He looked around, confused. The sudden bright light of the outside noonday sun burned his eyes, and he shaded his face with a shaky arm. He was in the parking lot, right beside the entrance to a thrift store. Somehow, Clay had passed through an invisible door, and that door had resealed behind him. Exactly as he had been silently hoping for. A loud bang sounded from the metal door as the guard on the other side slammed into it.

“What did you do?” The muffled yell of the man was barely audible from the other side. The pound of fist on metal rang loudly across the deserted parking lot. Clay shrugged, dumbfounded.

By the time Clay made it to the playground, the sun was beginning its descent down the sky. The palm trees cast long shadows over the dry pavement, and mosquitos were waking to fill the air with itchy humming. He had to push himself to keep going through the muggy Florida heat.

The playground was small and cheap, the metal structures devoid of paint and personality. It was swarming with young children, their parents chatting around the rotting picnic tables in the trash-filled field. One lonely little girl sat motionless on a swing, looking at her swinging feet.

“Amy!” Clay called. Her head perked up, and when her eyes locked in him, she jumped off the swing and barrelled toward him, pushing past a little boy running around with a jagged broken can. She smacked into Clay and hugged him around his waist as tight as she could.

“Woah! Woah,” he said, hugging her back.

“Whdeeudetee?” she asked into Clay’s shirt, completely muffled and unintelligible.

“What?” He gently pulled her arms from around him and looked into her face.

“What did you get me?” she repeated. Clay scoffed, messing up her sweaty brown hair. The loving smile she gave him as she tugged on the edge of his shirt made the stress of his whole day worth it.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing her hand. “I’ll show you while we walk back.”

The walk back to their group home was short. Clay unslung his heavy backpack from one of his shoulders and balanced it on his stomach, unzipping it carefully to avoid letting anything spill to the ground. He poked at the things he had found.

“This is a candle I found in their trash bin! It was just sitting right on top. I’m gonna go back soon. I bet there will be a lot more if I look harder.”

“Wow,” Amy said, eyes wide. “Do you think you could even sell it?”

“Probably!” Clay said happily.

The brown-green grass and shrubbery of the unkempt park quickly gave way to the cracked concrete and dilapidated buildings of town, and passers-by eyed the two young children with their pack full of stuff.

“This is the makeup I found! Do you know what it does?” Clay asked, holding up a colourful pallet with a small sponge brush visible through the plastic window on the bottom.

“Um,” Amy considered, looking closely at it. “I think that’s called eyes.” Clay blew sparkly dust off the lid, and a woman passing them veered away with a scowl.

“Oh cool,” Clay said, putting it away. “Well, you can have it if you want! I got a couple more too. Maybe we can trade them for food?”

“Oh yeah, that’s smart! I wanna use the pink,” she said brightly. “Then it can match my other shirt!”

“You’ll be the prettiest little girl in the group home.”

“You’re a pretty little girl right now!” a man called from the doorstep of the liquor store beside them. Clay’s stomach dropped. “Why don’t you come and sit on my lap and I’ll make you feel real beautiful,” he crooned. He was wearing a sweat-soaked and yellowed tank top, and his grimy hands clutched a paper-bagged beer bottle. Clay pulled Amy along, glaring at him. He took an aggressive swig, slamming the bottle back down on the pavement and scratching his fat belly with his other equally as dirty hand. “Come on, your boyfriend there won’t treat you right.”

“She’s five, you creep,” Clay said, pulling her around to his other side, protectively keeping an arm over her shoulder. The people on the street around them didn’t bat an eye. “Let’s go, Ames,” he said in an undertone, hustling off and ignoring the yells of the man that carried to them until they turned the corner.

“I don’t like it here,” Amy whispered to Clay.

“I know. I don’t either. Let’s just get to the home and—”

“I don’t like the home either.” They were on a smaller side street now, without the dingy storefronts of the main road of their small community. The pavement was cracked and losing a futile battle against nature, so broken that bicycle users would have to be very brave indeed to weather the bumps of the neglected street. Ahead, several children were skipping ropes and playing with a duct-taped soccer ball outside the propped open door of a tall brick building. A lopsided sign hung above the door, stating it marked the entrance to “Displaced and Independent Children’s Centre of the Florida Urban Zone.”

“Dick Fuzz isn’t that bad,” Clay lied, using the crass nickname for the home the teenage residents had long ago popularized. He hurried her past the other children and rushed to the door, checking with one hand to ensure the suitcase lock on his backpack zipper was secure.

“Hey Rock!” One of the older boys kicking around the soccer ball called. “Got anything for me?”

“If you’ve got the money to pay for it,” Clay replied shrewdly, ducking through the door and ignoring the ball that slammed into the wall at head level beside him.

Inside the home, the once-resplendent repurposed manor had clearly seen better days. The carpet had scorch marks and marker drawings, and the half-there chandelier with more burnt out lights than not had underwear hanging from the faux-gilded points. Clay and Amy took the stairs to the rooms, stepping over the sleeping toddler sucking her thumb on the stairs. They followed the long hall at the top to Clay’s shared dorm room, gagging at the two middle-schoolers making out against a chipped wall. Clay’s door had long ago fallen off its hinges when a roommate had hung on it for too long, and the bathroom door across the hall had met the same fate.

They slept in a converted parlour room that had been crammed with as many cheap mattresses and pillow-blanket combos as possible, beyond the boundaries of what was humane. Clay, as one of the oldest in the room, had earned his spot on a raised pallet, as well as a drawer in the only dresser, which he had managed to affix a filched bike lock onto. Two other boys were currently occupying the room, and they offered Clay not a single glance or greeting when he entered and picked his way to his bed with his sister.

“Hi Martinez, hi Gabriel,” Amy whispered to them shyly. One of them nodded, focused on his Rubik’s Cube, and the other got up and left.

“Okay, so we need to sort—”

“What’s this under your pillow?” Amy asked suddenly, pulling out a slip of paper covered in red marker. She unfolded it, staring at it blankly. “Are these words?”

“Yeah,” Clay said, tugging it from her hands. “It says…” he trailed off, frowning. “Well, it has a lot of bad words, but it says something like ‘I hate you and I can’t wait until you,’ uh,” he stalled, glancing at his young sister sitting on his bed beside him. “Uh, well, ‘I hope you go away for a very long time and don’t come back,’ is what it says.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” The light in the centre of the room flicked.

“You said ‘hate’ is a bad word.”

“It is.”

“Who said the word to you?”

“I have a few guesses.”

“But who?”

“Probably one of the girls I sold makeup to last week. It turned out the reason it was all being thrown out was because it had lead in it, and it made people have allergic reactions.”

“Like bees.”

“Yeah, like bees,” Clay smiled, “But don’t worry. I checked this time it was okay. This makeup won’t hurt like bees.”

“Did the bees girls say anything else?”

“They said they wanted to hurt me. Because I ruined their date,” Clay said, flipping over the paper and skimming the back. They sat in silence for a while, then Amy spoke up again.

“Does everyone here want us to get hurted?”

Later that night, Clay lay alone in his bed. The disjointed sounds of a room full of twenty boys sleeping around him filled his ears, and he stared at the ceiling. He thought back to his escape from the mall cop earlier, and how he had mysteriously escaped through a solid door. He still didn’t know how he had done it. The light had come from apparently nowhere, though it had seemed to mysteriously stem from his hand. Clay wondered if he had somehow made a skip in his memories and had perhaps actually opened the door and slipped through it, hallucinating the light and the solid phase-shifting. That wouldn’t explain how the guard didn’t get through though, and how he couldn’t open the same door after to continue his chase after Clay.

Maybe the door was a prop from an old travelling magic duo, who were famous for their fake-door tricks, continually tricking stunned onlookers across the east coast. Maybe the atoms in Clay’s body had perfectly aligned with the atoms in the door and allowed him to seamlessly pass through because the universe made a random mistake. Maybe it was a glitch in the simulation?

But no. The more Clay thought about it, the more he became convinced that no explanation he could come up with would satisfy him. There was something greater at play here. Somewhere, in the back of his head, a battle waged. The logical side of him that had been war-hardened after two years of fending for himself and his sister as orphans in the most crime-ridden city in Florida was winning. But there was a part, no matter how small, that fought against the logic. It was the part of Clay that hadn’t stopped hoping and dreaming, and it said that maybe, just maybe, it could have been magic.


	2. Owls are the cruelest bird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Owls begin to plague Clay. At first, they seem to be sent as a mean prank from heartsick girls, but Clay begins to doubt their true sender. Is it possible they could originate from somewhere else?

When Clay woke up the next morning, it was to someone shaking him violently.

“Stone! Geddup!”

“Mm,” he groaned into his pillow.

“Get up, dude!”

“Make it shut up!”

“It’s got something! Give it here!” The sound of someone crashing into a wall made Clay cringe.

“Stop yelling at me,” he rolled over onto his back, draping an arm over his eyes to block out the morning light. Another pair of hands starting shaking him, and then he was unceremoniously shoved off his bed. He landed elbow-first, letting out a sharp yelp on impact. “What?” he blinked from the floor, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“There’s a fucking owl here for you,” someone standing at the end of Clay’s bed said. It was one of his roommates, a teenager named Sleaz, and he looked angry.

“A what?”

“A giant ass bird,” a young boy named Eli exclaimed in his high voice, then screeched as something large and winged tried to land on his mattress. Eli ran at it, shooing it off. When it flapped its massive wings and took off again, he ran away from it, and it chased him playfully around the room while he screamed.

“We’ve been trying to wake you up for ages, dickhead. Get this thing away from us!” Sleaz said. The owl screeched again and started swooping into the heads of the boys. Clay got to his feet blearily, wondering if he was still dreaming.

“What—”

“Motherfucker!” Earwax, the tallest boy in the room screamed as a wing caught his ear, running out the door and continuing his yelling down the hall. There were only four boys left that hadn’t yet run in terror: the three ducking around Clay now, and one sitting on his bed near the door minding his business.

“Why do you guys think it’s for me?” Clay asked, watching the madness unfold. Around the room, blankets were strewn askew, and the normal clutter and trash of a space inhabited entirely by unmonitored boys had been scattered everywhere. It looked like a tornado had torn through a garbage dump, and a full-scale war had subsequently broken out over the disaster site. In short, ‘mess’ was an understatement.

“It was cuddlin’ with you before Sammy poked it,” the oldest boy, Dominic, said, “it went insane after that. It only calmed down when we said your name or tried to wake you up.”

The owl hooted from the makeshift perch it had found on a soda bottle on the dresser, ruffling its feathers proudly. When it noticed Clay looking at it, it stuck out a leg. A scrolled piece of paper tied with a sapphire and cranberry striped ribbon was attached just above its claw, miraculously undamaged despite the chaos it had wreaked. Clay pushed through the boys gathered around him and went up to the owl, carefully untying the note from its leg. He tucked the ribbon in his pocket, making a mental note to give it to his sister later. She would probably want to tie it around her hair or use it to trade with another girl. When he unrolled the paper, he saw it was actually a sealed letter, stamped with an ornate insignia. Written in scrawling text on the front was the following:

_Mr. C. Smith_

_The Second Boys Dormitory_

_Displaced and Independent Children’s Centre of the Florida Urban Zone_

_Florida City, Florida_

“Oh no,” Clay groaned.

“What is it?” Sleaz asked.

“A letter,” Clay said, holding it up to the light suspiciously. It was thick like there were multiple papers inside.

“Can you make it stop now?” Eli asked from his protective position under his mattress. The owl took off again and starting doing loops around a ceiling light.

“I think it just shit on me!” Dominic cried.

“No, that was me, I tried to spit on it,” Sleaz said.

“That’s worse!”

“Fuck you!”

“I think we got pranked,” Clay said, a smile rising to his face. “We don’t need to worry guys. It’s just another prank from the girls.”

“From the girls?” Eli asked

“Don’t you remember that prank war we had a couple of months ago?” Clay said.

“No, I got here a couple of weeks ago,” the boy frowned.

“I remember,” the boy near the door named Gabs said. He had his back turned to everyone, twisting around the Rubik’s cube he never allowed to stray from his hands.

“Well, aren’t you special,” Eli said, sticking out his tongue.

“It was hell,” Dominic said.

“It was fun!” Sleaz argued.

“No underwear left untouched,” Gabs shuddered. “It was all Julian’s fault too. Everyone knows you don’t mess with the chicks. They’ll fuck you up. They’re smart, they get inside your head, make you think you’re going crazy.”

“Yeah…” Clay said, wincing. “About that.”

“You didn’t.”

“I might have angered the girls.”

“Shit, dude,” Sleaz punched Clay on the arm. His heavy rings thudded into Clay’s bone, and he winced. “Goddamn idiot.”

“I know.”

“The heck did you do?” Eli asked.

“I sold them messed up makeup. Apparently, it makes your eyes get all swollen and ugly, and I screwed up their dates, or something.” Clay tucked his hands into his pockets and shrugged.

“Dude…”

“Don’t open that goddamn letter,” Dominic instructed.

“I won’t. They’re up to something.”

“It’s probably got a bomb in it,” Gabs mused.

“It is pretty thick,” Clay said, passing it around. Eli whistled.

“You’ve got yourself in a mess. You’ll have to watch your back for ages. Just don’t get us involved.”

Clay didn’t open the letter.

*****

The next day, Clay woke to a near-identical scene. But this time, there were three owls.

“Run for your life!” Earwax screamed, hurling his shirt at one of the owls to keep it away from him.

“It’s an infestation!”

“Every man for himself!”

The birds were resilient, following Clay for the whole day. He had no idea how the girls had trained them so well, but with the smug looks they were throwing his way in the dining hall as he tried to clean bird droppings from his sweater, he knew they were enjoying his misery. Amy sat beside him primly, her hair tied up with ribbon from yesterday.

“Do you think it’ll let me pet it this time?” Amy asked Clay with her mouth full.

“No.”

“Don’t be mean,” she said, setting her fork down and reaching out to one of the owls. “Pretty bird.” It trilled at her and hopped away, knocking over a loaf of bread. The stale loaf thumped hollowly on the ground.

“What do you think those girls put in the letters?” Clay asked Amy suddenly.

“I dunno, would they hurt the birdies?”

He looked over to the giant circle of girls gathered in the back corner of the mess hall. They laughed at some private joke they were sharing between themselves, and Clay distantly observed that it sounded like the cackles of witches. They really were haunting him with this prank.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly.

“It could just be a bunch of sparkles,” Amy said hopefully. “Then I could have glitter!” Clay smiled at her.

“It could be that. But it could be worse.”

“Like what?”

“Once Tiffany put a bunch of dirty razor blades in Reilly’s shoes because he didn’t come to the date he asked her out on.”

“Reilly doesn’t wear shoes. He has fake legs.”

“Yeah.”

Amy looked around blankly, finally catching sight of the older girls. She narrowed her eyes at Tiffany, pursing her lips thoughtfully.

“Wait…”

“Uh-huh,” Clay nodded.

“Tiffany did that to him?” she asked, panic-stricken. “She took his feet with the razors?”

“Yeah, she did. Kinda.”

“Don’t open that letter!” she cried, clutching onto his arm. “Keep your feet! Stay away, evil birds!” She pointed an accusatory finger at the three owls, and the one whose face looked like a flat white disc cocked it head. They were much too intelligent, Clay thought. They knew more than most owls did, wise as their species was known for being. It was almost supernatural. They seemed to analyze him and Amy with their saucer-like intelligent eyes. Clay questioned again the lengths those girls were willing to go to make his life miserable.

The big grey owl caught his gaze and stuck out its leg, trying to get Clay to take the letter off it. Clay rolled his eyes and ignored it. It called at him loudly, but the noise of the mess hall was so great that nobody seemed to notice. At another table, there was a tournament-style arm wrestling contest being held, and raucous cheers rose from those gathered every few minutes. The three birds perched on their dining table didn’t seem to bother the adults of the home, so involved were they in the competition at the moment. The Matron was pumping her fist and roaring encouragements while two janitors appeared to be placing bets on the winner.

“When will you leave us alone?” Clay asked the owls. They all stuck their letter carrying legs out at him.

*****

The next morning, when Clay woke up, there were no birds pecking at his head, and there were no droppings on his pillow. There were no feathers caught in his mouth, and the telltale hoot of insolent owls was not echoing in his ear. Instead, when he sat up, a massive mound of letters tumbled off his legs and chest.

“What the—” he lifted his arms under his covers, and more letters shifted off him. Sleaz, getting dressed across the room, scoffed.

“They got you again. Dumbass.”

“Shit.”

Clay got ready quick, swearing loudly when he realized the girls had somehow snuck more of the prank letters into his dresser drawer despite the lock he kept on it. It hadn’t even been broken, he marvelled, they must have slipped them through a crack one by one in the night without anyone noticing. In a room full of twenty boys, it would have taken incredible luck or incredible planning. He wasn’t sure which was more intimidating.

Clay made his way out of the home as quickly as he could, miraculously avoiding any more attention from the vindictive enemy girls. He ran to the playground, savouring the shade of the palm trees each time he passed under their wide green fronds. He had to watch where he stepped; if he wasn’t careful, he might trip and land on a needle or step in a puddle of piss. The broken sidewalk made for a challenging obstacle course, but Clay was used to it. His first few weeks in this rougher part of the city were full of dangerous mistakes but he was proud to say he had adjusted quickly. Nobody would confuse him for a local, but at least he didn’t stick out anymore.

The park was quiet. Too quiet. It was so quiet, in fact, that Clay didn’t dare set foot on the grounds at first. He took a careful perimeter, keeping an eye out for people hiding in the bushes or the flash of a slick gun barrel. It wouldn’t be the first time he strayed too close to a gang fight, and he wouldn’t make the same blunder twice. He did his best to seem casual, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of unease in the back of his mind.

He looked in every window in every building around him, but nobody was visible inside. The lights were all out, and the absence of the hum of the various electric functions of life made the area so obviously quiet that the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He anxiously drummed his fingers on the side of his leg, taking a steadying breath. When he didn’t notice anything particularly peculiar other than the lack of things, he allowed himself to stand at the edge of the park. No alarm bells flashed in his head.

Exhaling tightly, he stepped on the dry grass.

Nothing happened.

Clay looked around again. The world truly seemed to be at a standstill. Nobody was on the sidewalks lining the streets, the buildings were completely lifeless, and even the stray clouds in the distant sky had paused. Nothing was wrong, per se, but nothing was right either. The surrounding city block was frozen in an impossible slice of empty time.

Clay took another step. Nothing attacked him. Nobody leapt out to jump him. And no gunshots fired. He took a third step. Maybe everything was safe and normal after all.

Then came the hoot.

“Oh no,” he breathed, his eyes flicking up to the sparse tropical trees around him. He squinted, but didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. He waited a tense minute, but not another sound was produced from the foliage. He took a fourth step. Something rustled in the branches.

“The wind,” he told himself. “Just the wind.” He chanced a glance at the clouds again. They still hadn’t moved. “Maybe it was the kind of wind that’s only on the ground and doesn’t move the clouds.”

He took a fifth step. And a sixth. When nothing else strange happened, he took a seventh.

“Hoo!” called a bird in the trees. A flash of brown showed through some leaves.

“Please n—”

Before Clay could finish his words, a large dark mass alighted from the trees before him. It was a hundred— no, a thousand owls, all taking flight from the trees in a fear-inspiring symphony of hoots and calls. Fear shot through him, a rush of adrenaline pounding the blood through his ears. Impossibly, all of them held an identical letter clutched in their talons. Clay froze, locked in place with fear. If he ran and they followed, he risked being seen leading a thousand birds behind him through some of the busiest parts of the city. If he stayed, he didn’t know what would happen. The owls flapped their wings silently, hanging in the sky, analyzing him shrewdly.

There was no way those girls were behind this. This was beyond what humans could accomplish out of spite. An impossible word struck Clay, more unprobable than the scene in front of him now.

Magic.

As soon as the thought passed through his mind, quick as a flash, they dove.

He had to run. Now.

“Shit!” he swore, ducking as the first owls in the murmuration swooped at him. “Leave me alone!” He tried to get through them, but their solid masses battered him back. They formed a flurry of cruel beaks and sharp talons, all dive-bombing him in a frighteningly organized pattern. “No!” he cried. Through a gap in the feathers, he caught sight of the playground up ahead. He formed a plan in an instant.

“Screw off!” He pushed through their solid forms, gasping as something cut his cheek. His worn shoes slipped on the dusty dirt and dry grass, and he barely caught himself. If he fell, he didn’t think the owls would let him get back up. He kept going. Something pale flashed in front of his eyes, and as another sharp pain lashed one of his brows, he realized it was their letters. The corners of the crisp envelopes were swiping past and scratching lines across his skin. He threw his arms in front of his face, crying out, “please!”

Clay barely made it to the playground. Letters kept flying past him, and his arms were sore from the small papercuts whipping across them. He crouched under a wooden rope bridge, breathing hard through the slight reprieve. There was a metal staircase in front of him, granting light cover. Angered hoots made him flinch suddenly, and the planks above him rattled with the impacts of the owls landing on them. Letters slotted through the slats like they were being pushed through to him.

“Stop!” He twisted around, trying to not hurt the small brown owl that had somehow gotten to him and was now pecking at his face.

Something solid ran into the back of his head, and he lost his balance. He spilled forward and smacked his forehead on a step.

Clay’s world went black.

*****

The sound of a crackling fire popped and hissed somewhere, warming Clay’s skin, and casting a golden glow over his closed eyelids. He shifted slightly, wincing as he felt throbbing inside his skull agitated by his sudden movement.

“Stay still, honey.”

Clay’s eyes popped open, flicking around the room and landing on the smiling face of a woman perched in a cushy armchair across from him.

“Don’t worry,” she said sweetly,

“When you say that,” he choked out hoarsely, “I feel like I really should be worrying.”

“No, there’s nothing to stress yourself about. You’re safe here.”

Clay propped himself up on his elbows, nearly blacking out at the pain that laced through his head. He let out a weak groan.

“You should really lie back down,” she said, getting up from her seat and bustling over to the fire. She used a cloth to pick up a steaming kettle from the flames, and brought it back to the table between them, setting it on a trivet. “Tea?”

“Sure,” Clay said, still dizzy with the spots in his vision.

“Good,” she said warmly, like he had made the choice she wanted. He immediately felt a rush of happiness. He didn’t know this lady. He didn’t know where he was. Yet somehow, despite his best instincts, something inside him was telling him that she could be trusted. She was here to take care of him, and he was safe here under her protection.

He had come to on a soft sofa, the cushions thick and cozy. His dirt-encrusted hoodie was mysteriously clean. When he wiggled his toes, the holes in his socks were no longer there. Had the lady done this? He narrowed his eyes at her.

She was a matronly woman, buxom and plump. Her rosy cheeks held up large elliptical glasses, and her long hair was streaked with grey. Clay was sure she would be very attractive to someone much older than him with her pretty face and easy smile, but to him, she radiated motherly energy. He wanted to confide in her and listen to any advice she would offer him.

If Clay leaned back and starting recounting every hardship he had faced, he felt somehow sure that she would happily endure his hours-long tale. For every issue he had, she would have a solution for him. He found himself wishing he had spent his lifetime being raised by her, like she was a mother better than anyone could hope to have.

The only strange things about her were the unusual black cloak she was wearing and the fact that she was in a room with him that he had not entered of his own volition.

He didn’t know how he had come here. The last thing he had known was the fear of the owls and the terror of his fall. Had he knocked himself out when he hit his head? How this lovely woman found him? And how had she brought him here? And why?

A hundred questions spun through Clay’s head, only confusing him more. He wanted to ask them all, but instead, he said—

“Who are you?”

“I am Professor Moder, of Ilvermorny Academy.” She poured two cups of tea and offered one to Clay. He waited for her to drink from her mug first before taking a cautious sip. It was mint tea, sweetened with a bit of honey. It soothed his raspy throat.

Clay blinked.

“Okay, he said slowly. “How did I get here?”

“I’m afraid you took a tumble out by that playground of yours. Those owls were a bit overexcited and unfortunately, they were acting rashly.”

Clay wasn’t sure if it was the head injury he was sure he had received or if this woman was truly speaking some of the most confusing nonsense he had ever heard.

“The… birds?”

“We were all quite shocked by it. Have some more tea,” she prompted. Following her instructions, Clay finished the tea. His head seemed to clear instantly, and the headache plaguing him dissipated like it was never there in the first place. Clay eyed his cup suspiciously.

“A healing draft,” she explained, setting hers down on a saucer. “How do you feel now?”

“A what?”

“A potion,” she said like it was the simplest thing in the world. Clay frowned but didn’t question her further. He sat up properly then, looking around the room in wonder. Tall bookshelves ringed the walls, stuffed full of books and loose papers and strange artifacts. A staircase clung to the wall, curling around and leading up to more floors which all appeared to have even more bookshelves. It seemed as though they were in a tower stretching upward high into the sky.

“I’m sure you’re confused—”

“I am.”

“—but this all can be explained with a single truth. Clay, you’re a wizard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going forward in this work, I do not plan for regular updates. I'll do my best to update whenever I can! However, I am a high school senior in the process of scholarships and working two jobs to prepare for university, so I am an uncommonly busy person. I also have a hyperfixation on Minecraft and I have ADHD, so time really means nothing to me. 
> 
> Please leave a comment! I welcome criticisms and also praise (although I much prefer the praise)


	3. Acceptance and adoption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clay comes to terms with his magic, and leaves the group home with Amy for good.

“This isn’t a prank, is it?”

“No, honey, it’s not.”

Clay was silent for a while, staring down at his palms. Professor Moder allowed him time to process, waiting patiently until he spoke again.

“You teach at a magic school then? That liver place?”

“I am a professor of Ilvermorny Academy of Magic, yes.”

Clay looked into her eyes, trying to detect any hint of mirth or jest in her expression. None could be found. Her face was deadly serious.

“Clay, have you ever made something strange happen? Maybe something not completely possible under your previous understanding of the world? Something mysterious, that you couldn’t tell anyone else about because you would be seen as crazy or bizarre?”

Clay swallowed, thinking back to the blue lights that had spawned from his hand and created some kind of portal through the door in the back halls of the mall. He thought back further, to the time he was playing goalie for the older kids in their soccer match, and the wind kept blowing the balls away from the net any time anyone shot them nearby him. He thought about how he always had an uncanny sense of where his sister was and could always tell when she was in trouble and needed him to protect her. He’d never told anyone about that, and deep down, perhaps he’d always known that there was some kind of reason behind all of these impossible stories he had gathered over the years, even if it didn’t seem logical. The professor smiled, watching the realization dawn on Clay’s face.

“Oh,” he said, his face falling. He tried to process everything running through his mind, but a lump rose in his throat.

The logs in the fire shifted, throwing embers swirling into the air. Professor Moder wordlessly picked up a long wooden stick that looked awfully similar to the fake magic wands Amy made them play with sometimes. She flicked it at the pile of wood near the fire, and the log on the top flew into the dying flames, settling on the crackling firewood in the hearth. Clay watched, astounded. He tilted his head, looking for the glint of a string, or a person hidden behind a curtain that could have moved the wood for her. As he looked around, the Professor watched him bemusedly. Try as he might, he couldn’t find anything tangible to explain what had just happened. Eventually, he was forced to settle back and mull over the now very real possibility that the magic she was speaking of was in fact real.

He sat pensively for a moment, his mind spinning, full of terrified thoughts.

“And you healed me with a magic potion?”

“I did,” she nodded. Clay furrowed his brow.

“Did you send those owls after me then?” he asked accusatorily.

“Well, it’s complicated—”

“You used magic to make them attack me so you could steal me away? Did you kidnap me? Where’s my sister? Do you have her too?” Clay was getting worked up, standing from the couch and pacing around the coffee table. He took his hands from his pockets, balling them into tense fists.

“You should remain calm—”

“How can I?” Clay cried. “You kidnapped me! I don’t know where I am, I barely know who you are! I don’t know where my sister is!” Clay wasn’t sure exactly why he was reacting this way, but he knew that he was scared and that made him even more upset. His whole world had been turned on his head and he didn’t even have his little sister to console him and keep him grounded. “You attacked me with—” he gripped his head, pulling at his hair “—fucking birds!”

Professor Moder’s hand twitched to her side, but she stopped herself from grabbing her wand again.

“Those birds went out of our control,” she smoothly interjected. “We still aren’t sure what happened.”

“You have magic!” Clay exclaimed, “If anyone can control birds, you should be able to!”

“Messenger owls have their own special sort of inviolable magic. Once they set their mind on something, I couldn’t stop them if I tried. It protects all our letters, you see.”

“Stop being logical about this!” Clay said, crouching down on the ground, clenching his teeth against the tears welling up. “Don’t you see that my world is crashing around me?”

“I do, sweetheart. I understand that you’re frightened. The world is much bigger than you ever knew. But you don’t need to be scared of it.”

“It kinda feels like I should!” Clay’s voice was muffled as he stuck his face in his arms, shoulders shaking as he cried. He didn’t understand how his normal life could have been turned on its head so fast. Was he really that fragile? How could he have not known something about himself that seemed so big now? His life would never be the same, no matter what happened after this. He had magic. Did that mean that all of his luck was just from his powers? Had everything he ever earned been helped along by magic?

If he had known about it earlier, could he have prevented him and Amy from being sent to the home?

His world was not his own anymore. The relative certainty he had known yesterday in the group home that his life was a stable sort of awful was now no longer. Ignoring the signs of his strangeness had become a sort of reflex over time. He was used to explaining away the odd occurrences that happened around him. 

“I’m just lucky,” he would say, brushing off yet another avoided accident. “I must have some kind of repelling touch,” he would joke when he never got hit by a ball in baseball practice. “It must have been a coincidence.”

How many coincidences had he ignored? He was stupid. He shivered.

He flinched when he felt a warm hand on his back, and he looked up to see the Professor's kind face smiling down at him. His face cheeks were wet, and the sleeves of his sweater were snotty.

“I suggest,” she said sympathetically, “that we take some deep breaths.” 

“No,” he said defiantly.

“Yes.” Making firm eye contact with him, she breathed in and out. Without thinking, Clay mirrored her, the tears slowing with the inspirations.

“Alright,” she said after several rounds of breaths. “Are we better now?”

“I’m not sure,” Clay lied. She had been right; the deep breaths had strangely put a stopper on the fierce despair bubbling up in him. His feelings were still there, somewhere in his head, but he was detached from it, removed from that heavy emotion like a whisper in another room. It felt like magic, numbing him in a false way. He wasn’t sure if he cared.

“It’s normal to be upset. You don’t need to feel embarrassed.”

“I’m not.” It was a half-truth. He didn’t feel shame about crying in front of the Professor, he just felt shame that he had let himself ignore so many blatant signs for so long. Clay prided himself on knowing himself and being confident in who he was, so this terrible oversight was a blow to him. 

Clay shrugged her hand off him, more than a little embarrassed to have broken down in front of her. He pulled himself up to sit back on his couch, wiping at his face with his sleeve and sniffling. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, making a show of examining his surroundings, trying to seem casual. He tried to read the titles on some of the shelved eye-level books, but most of them were in languages he couldn’t even recognize, and his eyes were still slightly watery. “Is this part of the school?”

“No, this is a no-maj library.”

Clay gave her a blank look, looking away quickly when she made eye contact so she couldn’t see his red eyes.

“No-maj means non-magical person.”

“Right,” Clay said, pursing his lips, feeling a bit stupid that he hadn’t made that connection.

“Unlike you and I.”

“Because I’m a wizard,” Clay said, making air quotes around the last word. Something quaked in his stomach when he said it. Like saying it made it true.

“Precisely,” Professor Moder nodded without a hint of derision. “I am a witch, and you are a wizard.”

“You make it seem so simple,” Clay sighed, swinging his arms to rest on the sofa’s back.

“At Ilvermorny, we teach you not only about your magic and how it works but how to make it stronger and to use it responsibly. You’ll learn about the greater wizarding world, including its history and the many magical beings that make it a diverse community. Once sorted into your house, you’ll find the best friends you will ever meet at this boarding—”

“Boarding?”

Professor Moder’s head snapped up from the scroll of paper she had been reading from. Clay didn’t know when that had shown up, but he knew it hadn’t been in her hand when she started that speech.

“What?”

“You said it’s a boarding school?”

“Yes,” she smiled, “Ilvermorny is one of many prestigious magical boarding schools located all around the world.”

“Is there an elementary school?”

Professor Moder tilted her head, not understanding what Clay was getting at.

“Like, a school for kids? If they maybe had an older sibling in school and they—”

“Oh! No, of course not. We wait until all students have reached the age of magical enlightenment, eleven years old, before admitting them to Ilvermorny. Only the most capable gain entrance our school!”

“I see,” Clay said, folding his hands in his lap. “Well, thanks for your offer, but I can’t accept.” She looked confused. “I’m really sorry,” he said, cringing at the awkwardness of the situation. “There’s nothing to be done, it’s just not possible for me.” He felt awful disappointing her, especially after she had been so kind to him.

“I’m sure whatever is holding you back can be taken care of. We have a scholarship program that allows financially challenged students to attend thanks to the generosity of our donors, and of course, all food and board is provided for you while under our tutelage.”

“Right,” Clay said, stomach growling at the mention of food. “I’m sure it’s nice there, and it would be cool to learn some magic tricks, but I can’t. If my sister can’t come, I won’t either.”

“Your sister?”

“Yeah, my little sister, Amy. She’s five.”

“A little sister!” Professor Moder mused, rubbing a hand on her chin pensively. “And you care for her?”

“Well, we live in this group home together, but yeah. I’m not going to abandon her. I can’t just fly off to some school I barely know about because you say that I can do freakin’ magic and leave her to fend for herself. She can’t even tie her own shoes.”

“Well Clay,” She said. “I think I have an idea of how we can arrange a solution.”

She hastily summoned an owl, and Clay screamed when it burst through a high up window and spiralled down to them. He jumped over the back of the chair and hid behind it, watching it with suspicious eyes. It glared at him back. Each time it shifted, Clay shrank back, terrified of its talons and beak, which he knew now not to underestimate. She scratched out a quick message and attached it to the bird. It flew away, perhaps coming closer to his head than was necessary on its path back out the window.

A response came back within an impossibly short amount of time, and Clay wondered if these magical people just eschewed the natural laws of the universe every day for their postal delivery.

“Lovely!” the Professor exclaimed, holding up the letter. 

“Huh?”

“I’ve found you a home.”

Clay looked at her dumbly, and she offered him her hand. Confused, he took it, and was suddenly overcome with the strangest sensation of gut-wrenching twisting, like flight through space. They slammed into the doorstep of a house overgrown with vines and flowering plants, and Clay’s eyes immediately started watering with the scent of the blooms. The Professor firmly knocked on the door, and it was swept open to reveal two smiling witches, casting warm orange light through the doorway into the dusky night. They exchanged short greetings, and though Clay was barely following their conversation, sick as he was from his roiling stomach, he could tell that they were elated to take him in.

One of the witches had bright red curly hair, and she looked floaty and whimsical. The other had dark skin in fine braids, with a sharp, stern look in her eyes. They invited Clay and the Professor inside and asked him questions about himself while he picked apart a cookie, still nauseous.

Finally, he dropped the cookie and said, “Can we please go get my sister now?”

“Right!” The floaty one named Delphina said, getting up suddenly. “I knew I was forgetting something!”

The Professor took his hand again, and he hoped she didn’t mind the crumbs sticking to his clammy fingers. She did that strange twisting teleportation again, taking him back to the group home to get his things. She and the other two witches appeared right on the doorstep, and as Clay stumbled to the side, still disorientated from the sudden change in location, he heard a small “eep!”

He had almost stepped on Amy.

“Amy? What are you doing out here? It’s freezing!” Clay cried, pulling her up and brushing her off.

“Clay!” she squealed, hugging him tightly around his middle. “I was waiting for you!” Clay clapped a hand over his mouth, turning green.

“Are you this young man’s little sister?” One of the witches asked, peering around him to look at her. It must have made for a strange sight, with Clay surrounded by three women, all wearing the same sort of long robes, one wearing a black pointed witch’s hat, and standing on the step of a children’s home.

“Yes, I am! Have you adopted us?”

While Clay, Amy, and Professor Moder gathered their meager possessions from where they had stashed them around the home, the two witches went into the Matron’s office to speak to her. 

Amy asked the Professor what seemed like a thousand questions while she patiently took each item the kids gave her and folded it into a handbag that must have been much bigger on the inside than it looked.

“Is Clay gonna learn magic?”

“Yes.”

“But I thought he already had magic?”

“Having it and knowing how to control it are two different things.”

“Why can’t he just stay with me?”

“He’ll visit you during Winter and Summer holidays.”

“Why can’t I come?”

“If you get invited when you turn eleven, you can come to Ilvermorny too.”

They left the place in a rush. Clay never wanted to look back on the cigarette-stamped walls ever again, and Amy was just excited to see “a real-life witch’s hut!” He didn’t know how Delphina and Tabitha had managed it, but somehow, during the six minutes it had taken them to gather everything and make their way back downstairs, the two witches had completely convinced the Matron that not only had Clay and Amy never been at the home, but that they had never existed at all.

“It’s easier that way,” Tabitha said, ushering them out the doors and back outside. “I don’t like dealing with those no-maj laws, they’re so confusing!”

Clay took Tabitha’s hand and gestured for Amy to take Delphina’s. The Professor nodded approvingly, saying goodbye to Clay.

“I hope to see you soon, hopefully being sorted into my house,” she smiled, and with a loud pop, she was gone. Amy stared at the spot she had left.

“Magic…” she whispered, awe-struck.

Without another word, they were whisked back to their home.

Amy had gotten used to the concept of magic much quicker than Clay had. She loved interacting with the enchanted household items, like the broom that silently sassed anyone that made a mess, and the books that would sometimes start reading themselves out loud when they thought a room was too quiet. 

It still freaked Clay out sometimes when he woke up and padded over to the washroom, only to trip over the rug that migrated from room the room according to its whims, or when he put his toothbrush back after cleaning his teeth and it screamed that he hadn’t brushed for long enough. It seemed everything was imbued with some kind of magic in their house, and though Clay had expected to be disconcerted with being alone once he left the group home, he never ended up feeling lonely once.

He got used to talking to Tabitha and Delphina over breakfasts and playing with his sister at the park across the street during the day. He loved the dishes they made for dinner, and became used to being full for the first time in years. He even noticed that Amy seemed healthier like she had taken on a warm glow to her skin that radiated out from her with her chipper smiles and easy grins. Yes, Clay liked it here.

Three weeks after entering their house for the first time, Clay stood across the street from a decrepit, dingy strip mall. It took up a dusty plot of land, the untended ground so dry that weeds could barely grow from the cracks in the broken pavement. A streetlamp flickered dimly across the street, hanging over the entrance gate. Emblazoned across the top of the gate were the words “Madrigal’s Mall.” The buildings visible through the open gateway were crumbling and unattractive. It looked like somewhere Clay and his older friends from the home might haunt when they wanted to smoke, far from the eyes of unapproving law enforcement.

On his left was his little sister, clutching his hand like a lifeline. On his right were two adult witches. Clay looked over at them.

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” he asked dubiously.

“Yes we are, young man,” said the closest one, the black witch named Tabitha. She looked steadily over the plot, surveying the area.

“Just you wait,” said the other witch, the redhead named Delphina.

Clay grimaced. These past few weeks he had spent under their care were full of things like that; he had gotten used to being told “you’ll understand soon,” or vague explanations of strange phenomena that seemed normal to them like “well, it’s just magic, dear.”

Clay stared at the gate. He blinked. Had he just seen—? No, it couldn’t be. He was just making it up. For a moment, he thought he had saw a glimmer of light ringing the inside edge of the gate, like the lights of the portal he had magically opened all those weeks ago in that mall.

“Clay!” Amy whispered to him, tugging at his shirt and jolting him out of his thoughts. Tabitha and Delphina, hand in hand, had started walking toward the entrance to the strip mall.

“Come on you two,” Delphina said, looking over her shoulder. At Clay’s wrinkled nose, she laughed. “This place isn’t what it seems, don’t worry.”

“Do you think there’s more magic?” Amy whispered loudly to Clay.

“Gotta be,” he shrugged. “Otherwise how am I supposed to get those things from that list?” he said. He was referring to the list of required spellbooks and other various magical items that had been attached to the letter proclaiming gratitude to his acceptance of his position at Ilvermorny. He hadn’t known how he was going to find “One (1) starter kit of elementary potion supplies” or “Two (2) sets of cranberry and sapphire regulation uniform robes,” much less “One (1) wand,” but the witches had just smiled knowingly over their breakfast.

Clay watched edgily as the two witches reached the gate, and just as he predicted, right as they strode through it, they were gone.

“Where did our moms go?” Amy asked fearfully.

“They’re not your moms, Amy,” Clay frowned at her. “Don’t be stupid.”

“But where did they go?” Amy ran up to the arching gate, and just like it had happened to Tabitha and Delphina, she disappeared.

“Amy!” Clay huffed, pacing after her. When he passed through the gate, a blinding flash of white light blinded him, and he threw his hands up to protect himself, flinching despite himself. When no further attacks came at him, he cautiously lowered his hands again, and slowly peeled open his eyes.

“Woah,” he breathed, taking in the sight around him. “Amy, you’re seeing this too, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case it wasn't clear, Amy is Drista! I know Dream irl has two other siblings but I didn't know enough about them or their personalities to feel comfortable writing about them. 
> 
> Next chapter is already planned out, expect to meet our first other DSMP characters as Clay gets his school supplies and is introduced to the wizarding world for the very first time!
> 
> Thank you to everyone that reads this and leaves kudos:) I love all of you sm

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Follow me on Twitter @camcammmie


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